TO ROME WITH LOVE: The Film Babble Blog Review

TO ROME WITH LOVE (Dir. Woody Allen, 2012)

This year’s Woody Allen film is a Rome-set ensemble rom-com, but you could probably guess that from its trite title. It’s a blend of several disconnected story strands, that comes off like Allen is cleaning out his notebooks of jotted down ideas without fully fleshing them out.

There is a bit of the winning charm of Allen’s last film, the hugely popular MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, mainly in a scenario which has a sly Alec Baldwin revisiting his youth through Jesse Eisenberg (a perfect fit for an Allen film) who finds himself in a love triangle with Ellen Pageand Greta Gerwig.

And there’s some amusement from Allen, acting onscreen for the first time since 2006’s SCOOP, as a classical music promoter trying to make an opera star out of his daughter Alison Pill’s fiancée (Flavio Parenti) who can only sing in the shower.

But mostly TO ROME WITH LOVE is a trifle; a fluffy only fitfully funny film. Yet it so pleasantly breezes along with such gorgeous photography of its Italian locales by Darius Khondji, that it’s still a likable lark.

Take, for instance, Roberto Benigni’s storyline - Benigni plays a man who wakes up one morning to find that he’s become the famous person in Italy, but for no given reason. The press follows him everywhere, recording his every moment, much to Benigni’s bemusement.

Throughout his career, Allen has so much better satirized the media’s obsession with meaningless celebrity (see 1998’s CELEBRITY), than this silly go-round, but here Allen seems to be having such fun with it that it’s hard not to chuckle - even if it’s just a few mild chuckles worth.

Another strand, maybe the most sitcom-ish, concern Alessandro Tiberi and Alessandra Mastronardi as newlyweds who have to separately deal with the sexual temptations of a prostitute (Penelope Cruz) and a famous actor (Antonio Albanese). The comedy in this bit creaks more than in the others, and the payoff is extremely predictable, but Cruz, stunning as she’s ever looked on the screen, still makes it pop.

I was happy to see Allen back in his familiar role as the neurotic nebbish, and married to Judy Davis (a veteran of 4 previous Allen movies), but wished he came equipped with better one-liners. It says a lot that the role he gave himself is as underwritten as everybody else's.

TO ROME WITH LOVE is an average later day Woody Allen film - it’s better than SCOOP, TO MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER, and WHATEVER WORKS, but not as good as VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS or MATCH POINT. For a 76-year old film maker who puts out a movie a year, that’s not a bad batting average.

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On Shallower Tides...

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES (Dir. Rob Marshall, 2011)

Never believe the hype.

The word was that this was supposed to be the movie that got the franchise back on track. Even Johnny Depp was on record about how bloated and convoluted the last couple of PIRATES movies were, so the fourth film was set to right those wrongs.

Not so much. This installment is just as messy and murky as the last 2.

In fact, looking back - I felt exactly the same way I did after seeing the 3rd one (AT WORLD'S END). In my review of that I wrote:

"All the lame jokes, un-affecting fight scenes, and pointless attempts at romaticizing map-mythology with supposed sacred artifacts holding eternal power just left me bombastically bored.

I did however like the Keith Richards cameo (as Jack Sparrow's father no less). I heard there was a bonus scene like the other PIRATES had after the credits but at the 2 hour 45 mark I was dying to get the hell out of the theater - bet you will be too."

Except for the remark about the running time (at just over 2 hours this is shorter) I have the same reaction. This time I did stay to see the bonus scene though.

A lot of the cast from the series doesn't return - there's no Keira Knightly, Orlando Bloom, or Bill Nighy so the film offers a lot of Depp sparring off with Geoffrey Rush and Ian McShane as Blackbeard, a real missed oportunity as a character.

ON STRANGER TIDES is a noisy film full of groaners (Keith Richards has the funniest line, but I won't spoil it here), poorly plotted set-pieces, and Johnny Depp just swishing through the motions. It also doesn't take any pleasurable advantage of having zombies in it!

The last half takes the plot mechanics of INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE substituting the Holy Grail with the Fountain of Youth and re-writes them over and over again to no great effect.

Penélope Cruz and Depp have some mad chemistry but when she's reduced to a screaming b**** and Depp is just an ambitious cad they join the entire cast of people it's impossible to care about.

The 3D did nothing for me either.

I have to say though the audience around me seemed to love it all (there was even applause at the end), and my wife enjoyed it saying that she loved "the costumes, the detail on the sets and the ships," "how dark it was" and that "Johnny Depp appeals to all ages."

Judging from that this movie looks pretty critic-proof. It's an event movie that people will feel obligated to see so I'm sure it'll be a big hit. To me though it was another failed fourth and a big waste of time.

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